Learning to See the Map Upside-down

How to Innovate

I always say that in writing Doubt, I gave my attention to times in history that don’t have their own chapters in textbooks, the periods when some dogma was falling apart and the world seemed a chaotic marketplace of ideas. Looking at the history of doubt was like learning to see a map upside-down — it takes a moment to come into focus. 

I’ve been saying this for twenty years and this is the first time I thought to actually draw one. Why not until now? The mind carries around all sorts of potentials, like seatbelt-locks that your seatbelt, locked, just can’t seem to reach. It requires some finesse to loosen things up, then relax and try again, by feel. Then CLICK

How does one invent new things? Disposable Toothbrushes that come preloaded with toothpaste. Foot protector silicone goop that dries fast, so you can walk on the sand unburnt and avoid sharps in the backyard, but still feel barefoot. Anti-mosquito huge-brimmed hats with netting attached that extends to the ground but can be adjusted to any length, puffy sleeves to keep arms safe, some fashion elements — why not?

I’m just playing around but what allows a mind to play around?

• Time away from screens

• Read a poem

• Look at a map upside down. It can be any map. Just look at it with a wrong orientation and wait until your brain can take it in.

Here’s a poem. You can read this one as one normal sentence. Let the line breaks create a rhythm. Later if you look more closely, you’ll see that the line breaks help each little part of this sentence to make its own suggestions.

History

Even Eve, the only soul in all of time

to never have to wait for love,

must have leaned some sleepless nights

alone against the garden wall

and wailed, cold, stupefied, and wild

and wished to trade-in all of Eden

to have but been a child.

In fact, I gather that is why she leapt and fell from grace,

that she might have a story of herself to tell

in some other place.

It’s from my first book, 2001. It’s an inverted reading of the old story. Instead of being kicked out of Eden, Eve decides to leave. Instead of a fall, it’s a leap. In the old story she was duped, here she is adventurous. When people want to leave home and see the world, they already know that they are trying to get their own stories. Eve chooses freedom and narrative. The poem is a kind of an upside down map. It is the opposite of what we know, but soon enough one’s imagination has room for this perspective too.

We need to put our heads in the right space if we want to do some inventing, and one way to get there is to overwhelm our rational mind with a poem and/or staring at a map upside down. You can use any poem. Stay with the poem and the map until you really get to know it. Then sit or walk with something to write on and let yourself think. If there’s a problem you are trying to solve, or something you’re trying to think up, put that intention in your brain but then let it wander. If you are sitting and it is getting boring, read the poem again. 

If none of this appeals to you, you can always take a long shower. The shower has been a place for ideas even before it was our last refuge from our phones.

The poem above is one of my better knowns, and people who know it know it as “the Eve poem” or even “even Eve.” I sometimes which I’d called it that for the sake of ease. I called it “History” because a part of the reason history keeps changing, violently often, is because people keep being born and many want to make their mark, to write their own great story. The poem is also a consolation, saying that when you do get kicked out of your Eden for bad behavior, you should at least consider the possibility that you did it to escape, perhaps semiconsciously. Or at least that you’ve got a new story. It is your autobiography you are living, you snooze, you lose.